Ivan Meštrović has been staying away from football events in Croatia for months. After concluding his extremely successful Osijek story this summer, the former president of NK Osijek, who helmed the project to build club stadium and camp on the Pampas, decided to become a kind of media illegal.
However, after the story about the construction of a national football stadium in Zagreb was updated these days, with construction with the financial help of the Croatian diaspora being cited as the most likely model, which is an idea he presented to the Croatian public and the Croatian football federation (HNS) more than two years ago. Meštrović, as a special advisor to Davor Šuker and, as stated on the HNS website, “the originator of the idea of building the Croatian national stadium”.
Meštrović said: This is an idea that I presented more than two years ago, as a stadium in the role of a monument to the Croatian diaspora, where every seat would tell a sad story. Croatian Arlington. I believe that even the richest Croatian emigrant families would accept the idea of naming the tribunes after them. I am part of that diaspora and I know how much something like that would mean to me, but maybe I am not authoritative – said Meštrović when asked if he had any information about activating his idea.
Namely, the vice president of HNS and the president of Rijeka Damir Mišković , who has now spoken publicly about this model, said that the HNS delegation should have already toured the world and talked to representatives of the diaspora, but the corona situtation postponed everything. Meštrović, on the other hand, is not mentioned in this context, so we were interested in whether anyone, as the originator of this idea, contacted him on this issue, but from his answer it can be concluded that there was no such communication.
– From the position of Special Adviser to the President of the Association Davor Šuker, I can only say that I am glad that the advisory ideas are still being taken into consideration after a long time. I am not so involved in Croatian football and the work of the Federation that I could comment on announcements, decisions and moves on a daily basis – said Meštrović, adding that he is looking forward to every new investment, especially this one for which he would be the first to make a donation. In July 2018, Meštrović said the following in an interview for the official NK Osijek website on the topic of the national stadium:
“Personally, I have two visions of a solution to the national stadium issue. One is construction through the commercialization of the name, something that Allianz did in Turin, Munich, Nice … The second time is a bit more romantic, it’s an idea I’ve been working on for months. it is the construction of a stadium through crowdfunding of the Croatian diaspora to which I myself belong. Therefore, as in those partisan films, I can say: ‘Comrades, follow me’ “, said Meštrović at the time, and then presented his idea in more detail.
“More than 4 million Croats live abroad, and they are the biggest investors in the Republic of Croatia. The data for 2017 is that they invested more than 2 billion euros. These are all sad stories in the context of displacement, and we would do it this way. A monument to the Croatian diaspora, to those first generations who left Croatia in the 1920s, 1930s and 1950s. Families would donate money through a web platform, completely transparent, and on each seat of the new stadium would be engraved the name of their ancestor who left homeland and the year when it was. Is it Stančić from Brač who went to Punta Arenas in Chile, in 1936, which is nine or ten thousand kilometers away or anyone else …
We would have a stadium with a capacity of 35 to 50,000 people, which would later be visited by Croats from the diaspora, where the whole world would see a new approach to crowdfunding. So, it is a monument to our diaspora, Croatian sorrow, one of the three most displaced people in the world. I see it not only as a stadium, but as the greatest monument to Croatian misfortune, and again in the context of Croatian happiness through sporting achievements. It is an oxymoron in which the climate had to change and everything that the Croatian people suffered had to be paid for, so that now, through sport, they would be able to be recognized all over the world, “said Meštrović, whose ‘comrades’ they don’t seem to see him as the one they should go for anymore, although they obviously like his idea …
© Images by HYPERVIZ
Article source: https://sportske.jutarnji.hr/sn/nogomet/reprezentacija/neocekivana-reakcija-pa-tu-istu-ideju-o-hrvatskom-nacionalnom-stadionu-sam-ja-dao-jos-prije-2-godine-15029347
